Blackface in the United States: “Most scholars trace it to about 1830 in the U.S. By the 1860s, (minstrel shows comprised) the most popular culture form in the U.S. It was a theatrical form that included dancing, singing, humour and speeches. Mainly white men would put on what is called blackface, a mixture of burnt cork and water — the mask was very, very, very black. It didn’t really look like skin; it was meant as a mask. They would add red lips, and the whites of their eyes were accentuated so they would roll their eyes and do all these primitive, uncivilized movements caricaturing black Americans. A lot of the songs, speeches and humour were about slavery.”

Blackface in Quebec: “At the McCord Museum, you can find photos from minstrel shows in Montreal. It was definitely a 19th century practice in Canada. People have not done enough research to know how different or similar it was to the States. There were famous groups from the U.S. travelling to Canada and to Montreal, and we had our own homegrown troupes. But the scholarship needs to be done to talk about the specifics in Canada. Saying it’s not our history is wrong. A large part of the population in Quebec and Canada is in denial of our colonial history, and this is part of it.”[/np_storybar]

Addressed to members of the Théâtre du rideau vert (TRV) in reaction to the now-infamous instance of blackface in its year-in-review show2014 revue et corrigée, the tone was strikingly serene.

Craft wrote eloquently of her childhood and current reality working in theatre as a woman of mixed race (she is the daughter of a Haitian father and a white Québécoise mother). She wrote about the lifelong toll of rarely seeing people like herself on TV, in films or in theatre; and about the plethora of daily indignities one is subjected to as a visible minority.

Then she got down to the matter at hand.

“Applying makeup to a white actor to imitate a black person is not like donning a costume or a wig,” she wrote, in French. “It hits a nerve, pulls a cord that draws us back to the era of minstrel shows, colonialism and slavery.

“When I see blackface on stage, I feel like a black person is not worthy of being on stage but is only worthy of mockery.”

A reply came the following day from Céline Marcotte, TRV’s general director, expressing sympathy for Craft’s feelings while asserting that there had been no malice or racism involved, that the sketch was rather a wink to a successful member of the local black community, Canadiens player P.K. Subban, beloved by the québécois population.

“We can guarantee you that the creators of 2014 revue et corrigée harboured no ill intentions,” Marcotte stated in closing, “rest assured.”

That last sentence summarizes much of the confusion surrounding Quebec’s current blackface debate. Marcotte’s entire defence, and the thrust of most opinion pieces written in support of TRV since, hinge on the assertion that the sketch was conceived and performed in good faith.

What such a position omits, however, is a sensitivity to how the piece was received — not just by the largely white, francophone audiences attending the show, but by the people of colour to which every instance of blackface, directly or indirectly, refers.

Reached at her Villeray home in late-January, Craft remained dismayed by TRV’s stance and by the very idea of the sketch itself, a short video skit in which “Subban” and another hockey player talk about the former’s lucrative contract.

“There’s nothing (else) problematic about it, as such,” she said, “but it’s not the content or the intention of the creators that is the problem. It’s that blackface, historically, is born of discrimination. … Blackface was invented to put blacks onstage without giving access (to the stage) to blacks.”

Many have pointed out that TRV could have hired a black actor to play Subban. But in a reactionary outburst, TRV’s artistic director, Denise Filiatrault, stated that in light of all the fuss, the company would simply no longer include black characters in its year-end shows.

Her attitude points to a broader issue: visible minorities are significantly under-represented in Quebec’s theatre, television and film industries. People of colour could be found in just five per cent of the main roles in Quebec’s 30 most popular fiction TV shows last fall, according to a recent La Presse study.

In the opposite corner, several francophone (and at least one anglophone)journalists weighed in, with bluster, saying that this was all much ado about nothing; calling it an anglophone-created controversy; and arguing that blackface, minstrel shows and slavery don’t have the same history in Quebec, and therefore the same rules don’t apply.

Further complicating matters are oft-cited examples of a few well-known black Quebecers who are apparently OK with a little blackface. (Popular media personality Normand Brathwaite stoked the fire recently, saying that anglos “don’t understand our culture.”)

“It doesn’t change the facts. There is systemic discrimination against people of colour, and against actors of colour on stage, on screen and in the media. Whatever one person thinks changes nothing. We’re losing time and energy by not asking the deep questions.”

_____

Whether on Halloween, at sports events or in the movies, whites dressing up as people from other cultures is generally understood to be a bad idea: donning feathered headdresses and face paint (redface) is demeaning to aboriginals; while Mickey Rooney slanting his eyes, wearing prosthetic buck teeth and shouting in a fake Japanese accent (yellowface) in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is an abhorrent reminder of how bad things once were, apologized for with embarrassment by director Blake Edwards and producer Richard Shepherd in the film’s 45th anniversary DVD extras.

As far as we’ve come, race relations remain fraught in North America, from the recent killings of black men by police in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City, and of a 12-year-old black boy in Cleveland, Ohio, to this year’s lily-white Oscar nominations. From the Canadian government’s ongoing refusal to call an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women to Quebec’s currently dormant Charter of Values project targeting religious freedoms.

Blackface in particular is a recurring problem in Quebec. Recent high-profile examples include: a group of students in Université de Montréal’s Hautes études commerciales program painting their faces and bodies and acting out an array of Jamaican clichés during frosh week in 2011; comedian Mario Jean donning makeup to impersonate fellow comedian Boucar Diouf at the Les Olivier theatre gala in May 2013; and Joël Legendre following suit to play singer Gregory Charles in Radio-Canada’s Bye bye year-end show in 2013.

Each time, the debate reignites and familiar arguments are bandied about on both sides.

“I think I was more pissed when it happened two years ago with Mario Jean,” he said, adding: “If he really thought it was so funny, would he have the guts to come and do the same bit in front of a black crowd? … I got really passionate about that. It hurt me a lot, a lot, a lot.”

Phil Carpenter / MONTREAL GAZETTE

King, who moved to Montreal at age 13, stopped performing in francophone comedy shows for a time after Jean’s Diouf send-up. He has since returned to the circuit, but this latest blackface incident has reopened old wounds.

“It’s not (just) the act of doing blackface,” he said. “It’s everything that came after — all those articles and incoherencies, saying (the history of blackface) is an American thing.”

King rose to prominence in Quebec in 2009 with a routine blasting the Hergé comic book Tintin au Congo, widely criticized for its blackface-style imagery and demeaning stereotypes.

As somebody who works in the Quebec comedy industry, he feels personally insulted each time the issue resurfaces.

“All those French québécois comics are supposed to be my peers,” he said. “They’re people that I work with. The fact that some of them are so insensitive frustrates me. Thank God it’s not the majority. Most of my comedian colleagues and friends, when I tell them how I feel, they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know what that represented, or how you felt.’ ”

_____

Micheline Labelle has spent a lifetime researching, teaching, writing about and speaking out on issues of race.

“My training is as an anthropologist,” said the recently retired Université du Québec à Montréal associate professor of sociology. She knows about discrimination first-hand as a francophone of a certain age.

“I’m part of a generation of people who were humiliated by Quebec anglos, so it’s the sensitivity to that humiliation — for example, being told (by anglophones) to ‘speak white;’ it happened to me, it happened to my parents. When my mother went into anglophone stores, I felt the power dynamics.

“I was always revolted by everything concerning the humiliation of the other. I’m a sovereignist, but my vision of independence is a civic one. For me, québécois people are those who live within the territory of Quebec.”

A year-and-a-half spent in Haiti led to Labelle’s 1979 doctoral thesis, Idéologie de couleur et classes sociales. She won the Thérèse Casgrain Volunteer Award, established by Pierre Trudeau, in 1989. She held the Chair of Concordia-UQAM’s ethnic studies program from 1993 to 1996 and from 2006 to 2008; and UQAM’s Chair of research on immigration, ethnicity and citizenship from 2008 to 2014. Her most recent book is titled Racisme et antiracisme au Quebec (Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2010).

“[Painting one’s face to portray a person of colour] is like a disguise,” she said. “We cannot use the term ‘racism’ lightly, but it is close to prejudice and to stereotype, and this stereotype has a history … so we have to be careful.”

Arguments that the histories of blackface and slavery are not the same in Quebec as in the U.S. or elsewhere miss the mark, Labelle argued. Neither our province nor our country escaped the ravages of these practices.

“We don’t have the same history, obviously, but we have a colonial history,” she said. “There was slavery in French Canada, and in English Canada, including in English Canada on Quebec territory. It doesn’t have the same depth; it was not plantation slavery. But sexist and racist ideology is a global thing. It’s part of the geopolitical culture of the world system. It takes on different forms if you’re in the Caribbean, Brazil or South Africa, but we’re not exempt or apart from it.”

Vincenzo D’Alto / Montreal Gazette

Dismissing the uproar over blackface as an uptight anglo thing is as problematic as labelling all white francophone Quebecers xenophobic, Labelle cautioned.

Labelle is careful not to make blanket statements; she prefers to break things down on a case-by-case basis. Beyond the current blackface debate, she has long been perturbed by the ways race and humour sometimes intersect. She volunteered an example.

“Regarding Normand Brathwaite,” she said, “I always found — always — that people made inappropriate jokes about him. … I always found people laughed a lot about (his skin colour). … That, to me, is the subtle side of racism — in jest.”

_____

And that’s the tricky thing about the current blackface debate. It all stems from a joke. Anything goes in comedy, we are told; but does it? Humour can be playful, but humour can be cruel. And the difference between laughing with and laughing at, as any kid in the schoolyard can tell you, is everything.

“When you’re talking about racially specific jokes, you have to ask, ‘Who finds it funny?’ ” said Charmaine Nelson, associate professor of art history at McGill University.

Intention as a measure of racism is a really faulty [barometer]. It puts the emphasis on the perpetrator and doesn’t look at the harm to the victims.

Born in Toronto, Nelson completed her undergraduate and masters degrees at Concordia before obtaining her PhD from the University of Manchester in England. She has published four books, including Racism Eh?: A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race and Racism in Canada (Captus Press, 2004); and Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010).

For Nelson, the supposedly humorous aspect of modern instances of blackface link back to the original spirit of the practice, in 19th century minstrel shows.

“A joke is sometimes more harmful than other types of utterance,” she said. “The wonderful scholar Eric Lott explains that through what (whites) were singing about in minstrel shows — roasting, burning, smoking and hanging black people — they were lynching us under the guise of comedy.

“The comedic turn made it permissible to utter horrid, violent things. At the same time, they were really lynching blacks in the south. It’s a joke that is not a joke, enunciating something happening in a way that white people can laugh at; but blacks are not laughing.”

Dave Sidaway / MONTREAL GAZETTE)

Nelson began looking into contemporary occurrences of blackface following an incident in Campbellford, Ont., in 2010, in which one man, dressed up as a Ku Klux Klan member, and another, in blackface with a noose around his neck, won the Halloween costume party at the local Royal Canadian Legion hall.

That recent examples in Quebec have not been as explicitly injurious or that they were said to be all in good fun doesn’t make them any better, Nelson argued. Again, it comes down to intent vs. effect.

“Intention as a measure of racism is a really faulty (barometer),” she said. “It puts the emphasis on the perpetrator and doesn’t look at the harm to the victims. It means that no one is guilty — who’s stupid enough to say they intended harm? No one has to face the music.”

For comedian King, the widespread resistance to questioning blackface in Quebec is a reminder of the extent of the racial divide.

“I see the level of how much (white Quebecers) don’t know us and aren’t sensitive to us,” he said. “It’s really sad. Nobody called anybody racist in the first place. We said, ‘What you do is associated with racism.’

“If you do something that makes you look racist, and I tell you, ‘Don’t do it.’ And you say, ‘No, it’s not racist.’ And I say, ‘(Just) don’t do it.’ And you say, ‘No, freedom of speech.’ And I say, ‘I’m trying to make you not look racist …”

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

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